


Soaring

by m_findlow



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 04:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13380384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_findlow/pseuds/m_findlow
Summary: A routine mission is about to turn awry





	Soaring

Jack zipped up the jacket all the way to the top of his neck and buried his cheeks into its lambskin collar, savouring the warmth.

'Nice day for flying,' he observed, rubbing his hands together and staring up at the ominous clouds coasting in overhead.

'It's November,' his partner responded, not looking up from his task. 'What were you expecting?'

'Is it too much to ask for a little sunshine?'

'You think the Germans would prefer we call things off until summer?' he said, examining the line of oil on his dipstick.

Jack laughed. 'Next time we run into one why don't we ask him?'

Ben shook his head and returned to the task at hand. Ben Turner was a fellow member of the 652nd squadron of the Royal Air Force, and Jack's partner for their current mission.

The Air Observation Post was a non combative arm of the Air Force. It's primary responsibility was to provide reconnaissance on artillery positions, and to direct possible targets for ground based military operations.

Turner was an aircraft engineer, and should have been flying bombers and fighter planes, such was his technical knowledge and natural ability in the cockpit. Sadly a childhood bout of polio had damaged some of the nerves in his right leg, meaning that the Royal Air Force medical staff refused to clear him for active combative duty. There was no question that he could operate a rudder pedal with ease, but the stringent conditions that applied to those positions forced him to be relegated to the observation division, where the eligibility criteria was far more flexible. That, combined with his other skills, they would have been fools not to recruit him in some sort of serious avionics role.

Jack watched the young man continue his examination of the aircraft. It wasn't strictly necessary as they had ground crews and other engineers who had already conducted maintenance checks, but Ben was nothing if not a stickler, ensuring that the plane was fit for takeoff in every respect before he got in.

It should have made him out of place amongst his fellows, but despite his young age, they all respected him too much, and Jack was the only one in the squadron who got away with calling him Benny Boy.

Since joining the squadron six months ago, they'd quickly become fast friends. Not the least of which had come from them both being considered the odd ones out. Jack for being the only American, Ben for being the only Welshman. The rest of the squad were comprised of Englishmen and Scotsmen, who became strangely banded together despite hundreds of years of fighting between the North and South. They weren't at all hostile, but they received plenty of well meaning banter, mostly centered around the need to translate instructions from English into whatever it was they spoke back in Wales, and to provide diagrams for explaining things to Americans. They both took it in the spirit it was intended, which earned them the right to retaliate with jokes about cricket and golf.

Jack enjoyed Ben's company, and the Welsh accent made him feel like he was home. Decades stationed in Cardiff had had an impact on him after all. And Ben wasn't at all what he'd expected. Though the accent drove him wild, it was clipped and careful, not the sort of easy talk he was used to hearing thrown about in pubs on a Saturday afternoon. He'd come from a family that had moved to England when he was still a boy, and he'd received a public school education, more than most of his friends back in the home country could have ever hoped for. He'd treated his education as a privilege rather than a right, and hadn't forgotten the simple family values he'd been taught as a boy. He was more than a little surprised to discover Jack had been living and working in Wales prior to his appointment with the RAF, but they'd found common ground because of it.

Jack naturally found him handsome and charming in a quiet, understated way, but his charms failed to work on the young man. He had to give credit where credit was due. It was a remarkable man who failed to fall for the captain's attentions, and he respected him all the more for it. If he had to go out on a mission with anyone, he was glad it was Ben.

He gave the plane a once over with his eyes. It was an Auster Model J, a single propeller, brace-winged monoplane. She was never going to be as sexy as her bomber and fighter plane cousins, but her top mounted wing frame made her perfect for the job she was employed for, giving her pilots unrestricted views from their cockpit side windows of the ground below them. The cabin was big enough for three crew, including two pilots up front with dual controls, and the third seat in behind.

Today it would just be the two of them, one flying, the other reviewing artillery positions and marking them on their ordnance maps. They'd also be providing intelligence on recommended positions for other artillery and ground forces. That was another reason he was glad to be taking Ben with him. The young man had a sharp mind and a tactical prowess which their ground commander, Lucien Doyle, would be looking forward to interrogating upon their return.

Ben must have sensed Jack watching him fuss over the landing gear, or watching him, to be more accurate.

'Why don't you make yourself useful and get the maps?' he suggested, still not looking away from what he was doing.

'Yes, sir,' Jack mock saluted him. They were equal in rank, but it was just one of the many ways Jack endeared himself to the young man.

'And a few extra pencils while you're at it,' he added. 'I managed to retrieve a couple after our last flight, but the rest must still be tucked away in the fuselage beyond reach.'

'You should stop dropping them,' Jack joked, remembering the frustrated groans from his copilot each time he had to extract a new pencil from his pocket to mark their maps. 'You're gonna blow Doyle's budget.'

'Maybe if you weren't so heavy handed on the controls,' he quipped. 'Honestly, where did you learn to fly?'

'You don't wanna know,' Jack laughed. He also knew Ben didn't mean what he said. Either of them could have rocked a baby to sleep in that aircraft if they wanted.

When everything was inspected and checked off to Ben's satisfaction, Jack thrust open the cabin door.

'You wanna play with my controls today?' Jack teased, asking him if he wanted to take the second chair in front.

'Think I'll be safer in the back. Besides, I don't need your controls.'

Their innuendo laced conversation wouldn't have been appropriate anywhere else, but now it was just the two of them, Ben let him get away with it, and gave back as good as he got. He had a suspicion that Jack might have batted for the other team, but he carried himself with such gusto and fearlessness that perhaps he'd gotten his wires crossed. Plus he'd seen Jack spin more than one lady across the dance floor when they had a few days leave, and he seemed to enjoy it. The ladies certainly did, often swooning at his winning smile and easy nature.

'I'll try not to be hurt,' Jack replied. 'Maybe next time you can fly and I can have a go with your joystick.'

'Shut up and get in.'

Their banter ended as soon as it had begun as they ran through their preflight checks, which both of them took seriously.

'Rudder controls?'

'Check.'

'Flaps?'

'Flaps set to fifteen.'

'Fuel?'

'Thirteen gallons.'

Jack keyed the high frequency radio. 'Base, this is tango whiskey two niner four requesting permission for take off.'

'Tango whiskey, you're clear for take off from eighteen left.'

'Roger that. Taxiing eighteen left.'

As the engine roared into life, Jack taxied her carefully to the designated runway and they hustled down its length until they were airborne.

Jack had flown all kinds of craft in his long years, but there was something about a space ship which just didn't compare to this. Maybe it was the lack of atmosphere in space. After all, with no oxygen there was no wind, no resistance, no turbulence. It was smooth and almost boring. It was as if they'd taken the joy of flying and completely sanitised it of whatever it was that made flying so great in the first place. This was different. He could feel the air rushing over the wings, lifting the plane higher and higher, he could feel the temperature drop as they ascended through the thinning atmosphere, and feel the bumps from battling through clouds and mist that stood in their way, tiny gusts of air penetrating the crevices between the canopy window and the fuselage. It was visceral and thrilling. This was what flying was really all about, and he loved it.

There was something else though. This was a revolution in technology. He'd come from a far off place, so many tens of thousands of years into the future that even though he knew he was ultimately descended from humans on Earth, he didn't feel as if he could call himself one of them. Human, yes, but not an Earth human, as he thought of them. These people were beyond incredible. In the space of fifty years, they'd gone from horse and cart to motorcars, jet planes, tanks and submarines. They'd been at the forefront of modern technology, and had the gumption to invent such wonders that had never before been imagined, let alone built to function. These were the pioneers of the human race, upon which every technological advance for the next fifty millenia would be founded. He was in awe of their brilliance and their bravery, and proud to be flying one of the great machines of the twentieth century, which would change the face of the whole world as they knew it.

'Tango whiskey two niner four. We've reached altitude twelve zero, requesting to level off.'

'Roger two niner four, cleared to level at twelve zero.'

They'd reached a cruising altitude of twelve thousand feet. Not quite the perfect altitude for this bird, but high enough for what they needed to be able to see on the ground below. It would be another half hour before they reached their ultimate destination, giving Ben time to review their ordnance maps once again, whilst Jack kept them level and monitored his guages, windspeed and altitude foremost.

'You must get bored of all this, Jack.'

He frowned. 'What do you mean?'

'Surely they've better uses for you than an observation posting.'

It was true. He could've had any posting he liked, so long as it left him available for Torchwood duties, whenever they might arise. In all honesty, he was convinced they wanted him out of their hair, and the feeling was somewhat mutual. He'd never qualify for Torchwood employee of the month. At least here he was doing his bit for Queen and country in a more meaningful way.

'Beats being stuck in wet trenches in France,' he confessed.

'When ever were you in France?' Ben asked incredulously.

'Great War.'

Ben scoffed loudly. 'That's impossible Jack. You would've been just a boy!'

'I was young and stupid. Lots of boys were. And the army took us in willingly.'

It was as good a lie as any, he thought. Though it held the ring of truth. He had been recruited to war as a boy. Just not this war, or any war on this planet, for that matter. It didn't matter though, all wars were ugly in the same way.

'Some would argue you still are,' Ben responded, breaking Jack from his train of thought.

Jack laughed and wished he could see the tiny grin that would be creeping over Ben's face, sat behind him.

'And good looking to boot!'

Ten minutes into their cruise, it became clear that the weather was not going to improve.

'Little choppy, wouldn't you say?' Jack observed.

'Not the best day we've had,' Ben admitted, not prepared to mention that he'd dropped another pencil into the footwell beneath him during a bout of turbulence. Jack couldn't be blamed for that one.

'Base, we've got some rough cumulus here. Permission to ascend to fifteen zero?'

'Granted two niner four. How's airspeed?'

Jack tried to focus on the guage. It was a little bumpier than he'd first thought, and he struggled to keep a fix on the reading.

'A little sluggish.'

'Right-o. Ascend and come down closer to you mark.'

'Copy. Two niner out.'

Jack pulled back on the control column and allowed the Auster to gradually climb. It was hard work against the wind resistance outside, added to the natural decease in airspeed on account of the nose pointed skyward. Keen as he was to escape the bad weather, it wouldn't do to climb too steeply and have the plane stall on them.

'I thought you said it would be calmer up here,' Ben muttered, still being jolted in his cabin seat.

'Blame the weather man,' Jack complained. 'Taking her up to seventeen to try and shake this.'

'Are you sure?'

'She can handle it,' Jack said reassuringly. She could fly as high as eighteen two, but he wasn't prepared to go that high unless they had no other choice.

If anything the conditions grew worse, the wind and thick cloud buffeting their tiny craft, and small icicles forming on the leading edges.

Suddenly there was a flash of light, then another.

'We've got lightning!' Jack declared.

The improved design was almost all metal these days, but there were still fabric coated wings that could be susceptible to lightning strikes. In the end, it wasn't the fabric wings they had to worry about. A large bolt struck the rear of the plane, almost jolting them out of the sky. The plane suddenly banked hard to the right.

'What's happening?'

Jack was frantically checking his instruments. Apart from his artificial horizon taking a tumble leftward, everything else seemed fine.

'Take a look back and tell me what you can see,' he instructed, whilst gripping hard on the column and trying to bank the plane back left, to compensate for their sudden lurch.

Ben twisted in his seat to survey the back of the plane, and immediately saw their problem.

'Rudder is hard left. Must have been damaged by the strike.'

Jack pumped the right rudder pedal trying to dislodge the stuck rudder. When that didn't work, he tried the left pedal.

'It's no use,' he said, the strain evident in his voice as tried to hold the plane on a level keel.

Ben was frantically studying the maps in front of him, and peering over Jack's shoulder at their heading, before realising that he was struggling with the controls. He unclipped himself and clambered over the seat in front of him, grappling for the second flight column and pulling hard alongside Jack. It was a crazy move, and somewhat dangerous in a moving aircraft, but that was just the sort of person Ben was. Practicality took precedent.

'Jack, if we can't change direction, we're going to end up heading straight over German controlled airspace.'

'What do you want me to do?'

'If you can't change our heading, you're going to have to decrease air speed and buy us more time.'

Jack knew what that meant. Nose up.

'We can't climb much higher,' he warned. The weather outside was turning to turbulent winds and hail.

'What about flaps? Left flaps to forty five would create more drag on the other side.'

Jack risked a hand off the control to pull back the flaps control, Ben taking a firm hold of the second set of controls, and immediately felt the plane level back slightly, watching his horizon slip into a more gentle arc.

'Well, that was fun.'

'It's not over yet,' Ben confirmed. 'We're way off course. You're going to have to make a heading one seven five.'

'No chance,' he argued, studying the instruments in front of him. 'Best I can manage is two zero zero.' He tried to assess his options in the darkening sky. 'What if we let it bank around a full one eighty? We got enough altitude.'

'You want to be over enemy airspace that long?'

'Gimme another option!'

Ben was rushing through his options in his head. Fighter pilot mentality was not in his nature, but physics was.

'We can cut down our time over enemy airspace if we increase speed and let her bank faster.'

It was a good idea, and probably the only one they had right now, but for once, Ben's brilliance as an engineer would be outdone by Jack's own dab hand at the controls. He didn't have to have a degree in mechanical engineering to know that the shuddering control column beneath his hands was only just barely holding it together. More speed meant nose down, and right now, he knew that doing so would end up with the entire plane in a tailspin, plunging them towards the earth at 190 miles per hour. Despite the chill air in the cockpit, there was a sheen of sweat forming on his brow at the effort needed to keep the plane's wings level in the torrid weather.

'Are we still over allied ground?' Jack found himself having to raise his voice over the ice now pelting their metal frame.

'Not for much longer.'

'You're gonna have to jump,' Jack ordered.

Ben took his eyes off their instruments to fix Jack with a determined look.

'No way!'

'If you jump now, you'll chute into safe territory. You said it yourself, we're minutes away from being somewhere we really don't wanna be. If there's a Messerschmidt patrol nearby, we'll be shot to the ground.'

'Then you're jumping with me,' Ben ordered back.

'There's a chance I can still turn her around.'

'And as much chance you'll die trying. A plane's not worth a man's life, Jack.'

'Tell that to Doyle! Anyway, if I can get her under control I can send for help to come pick you up.'

'You're insane, you stupid bastard! '

'One of us had to be!'

Ben could tell he wasn't going to get any more sense from Jack, and also that he wasn't about to back down on his order for him to bail. It was either going to be one of them or both of them, and Jack had already made the decision.

'If we make it out of this,' Ben said, struggling into the parachute pack, 'you're going to owe me the biggest bloody whiskey of all time.'

'Quit stalling!'

Ben heaved back on the cockpit door and was assailed by the force of the wind and rain. It whipped about the cabin like a mini tornado and threatened to pull him out before he was ready. If this was going to be their last moment, he wasn't going to waste it.

'I love you, you stupid Yank, so you had better come back in one piece!'

'Go!' Jack yelled over the thunderous rush of wind.

Seconds later he could see the tiny figure falling from the sky. He waited the breathless minutes until he spied the tiny parachute fly open, carrying his young cohort to the ground, and to safety.

After that he knew it was only a matter of time. Without the counter weight of his companion, the controls grew heavier in his hand, his artificial horizon beginning to lean counterclockwise once more. He heaved against the inevitable for a few minutes longer, and finally began to think he might salvage the aircraft after all. Then a gust of wind got caught underneath his extended lefthand flaps. It should have passed straight under the wing, but the slight updraft sent the left side tilting upwards, and his front end downward. It was the thing he'd been dreading.

The nose dipped dangerously forward, sending the plane down. His altimeter began scrolling sharply down as the descent caused him to gather speed, and the fight against his stalled rudder ended. The right wing dipped lower and began to pick up speed, spinning the craft over on its side, until the downward pressure brought its nose down again. He didn't have to see his instruments to know that his plane was now spinning like a corkscrew on its raging plummet to earth. The artificial horizon dial spun wildly, no longer able to tell where the horizon was. Jack knew. It was right in front of him, and growing closer by the minute. The world slowed for a few seconds before the final devastating impact and he realised in that moment that the rain had finally stopped.


End file.
